1. Field
The present invention relates to an apparatus for controlling communication, and more particularly, to a communication control method that can reduce an amount of communication performed by a terminal that accesses a server to receive a service.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various services have become available through access from terminals such as PCs (personal computers) and mobile phones to servers, with widespread use of the Internet. Such a service, however, involves frequent access from the terminal to the server to obtain the latest data, depending on how the service is used. As a result, the amount of communication increases. In particular, for a battery-powered terminal, such as a mobile phone, that uses a low-speed and low-capacity communication path, reduction of the amount of communication is a challenge. Although it is possible to incorporate measures for reducing the amount of communication into each application program on a terminal, such measures have to be incorporated on a case-by-case basis, and therefore, the reduction in the amount of communication can be achieved only by an application incorporating the reduction measures. Thus, there is a need for versatile measures that can reduce the amount of communication without modifying individual application programs. In order to address the need, a proxy server has been conceived (e.g., Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2006-293466). The proxy server receives, from a terminal, a content request including addresses of multiple access destinations, transmits the received content request as content requests for the individual addresses, and transmits response messages as a single response message to the terminal. In this case, the terminal transmits, as one communication message, multiple communication messages for different destinations, and receives, as one response message, multiple response messages from different transmission sources.
In the method discussed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2006-293466, since it is necessary to modify both the terminal and the proxy server, the modification scale becomes large and the modification cost increases. In addition, the effect for reducing the amount of communication can be obtained only between the modified terminal and the modified proxy server.